International Film Festivals in AsiaPumelo International Film Festival(PIFF) ( http://www.pumelo.com ) is screening 60 award winning films out of 265 films entered from 42 countries. There is a competition for the best film based purely on audience choice & they also award prizes for best director, best cinematography, best music score, best short, best documentary, best actor, best actress, etc. The films screened at the Pumelo International Film Festival are selected by a jury comprising o...

Tuesday, February 13----Actress-turned-director Julie Delpy's TWO DAYS IN PARIS, which had its world premiere in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival a few days ago, has been purchased for North American rights. The Samuel Goldwyn Company and Netflix's Red Envelope Entertainment have announced the t acquisition of the film, which they are planning to release in the US and Canada this coming summer. TWO DAYS IN PARIS is a romantic comedy about a French woman photographe...

Sunday, February 11----Arts Alliance Media (AAM), a UK company that is leading the charge on the creation of digital cinema networks in the UK and the rest of Europe, is the leading sponsor for the European Film Market (EFM). This successful collaboration will culminate next year with the company serving as the exclusive main partner of the EFM. “With Arts Alliance Media, we have found the ideal partner for digital film services,” comments EFM director Beki Probst. The London-based compan...

Friday, February 9----As the hooplah from last evening's Gala Opening Night has died down, it is now time for the Berlinale to get serious about the business of international film. After several days of preparation, the European Film Market opens this morning, shattering previous records of attendance, exhibition booths and films to be screened. With the changes in the industry calendar of the past few years, the EFM has become an indispensable place for sellers to hawk their wares and for buy...

Saturday, January 27----A series of "last minute" deals were announced in the past 24 hours that have made this Sundance a very positive one for film buyers and sellers. While there will undoubtedly be more announcements in the coming days, these acquisition pick-ups underscores the Festival's growing importance as not only a treasure trove of American indies, but of international fare as well. This was evident with the announcement that ENEMIES OF HAPPINESS, a Danish documentary by Eva Mulva...

Friday, January 26---On the eve of the Festival's closing weekend, several impressive distribution deals have been announced, which have made this one of the more active Festivals in recent years. In light of the box office and awards bonanza of the little-film-that-could LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE (a Sundance pick-up last year for Fox Searchlight), acquisition execs have been aggressive in snatching up films with equal potential. Of course, whether these were wise decisions that will pay off hands...

Thursday, January 25----Deals are coming fast and furious as the Sundance Film Festival enters its final weekend. While some acquisition execs will be waiting to see what American and international titles win jury and audience awards, the activity has been brisk with more deals announced in the past 48 hours of various films that have world premiered at the Festival. ONCE, a tender Irish romantic musical comedy by John Carney, has sold worldwide rights to sales company Summit Entertainment. O...

Tuesday, January 23----A slew of acquisition pick-ups have accelerated as the Sundance Film Festival heads into its final days before the announcement of its awards on Saturday evening. Talks of bidding wars, all night negotiation sessions and aggressive kibitzing have generated alot of buzz in indie circles, with more announcements expected in the coming days. Among the prominent deals announced, Paramount Vantage, the newly formed specialty arm of Hollywood major Paramount Pictures, has pi...

Monday, January 22----In one of the few deals announced here for a fiction feature (documentaries have been getting all the action so far), The Weinstein Company has announced its acquisition of worldwide rights to GRACE IS GONE, screening in the US Dramatic Film Competition here. The film, directed by James C. Strouse, stars John Cusack in a departure from his useful laconic screen self, as a father who is overwhelmed when he gets news that his wife has been killed in the Iraq War. The film ...

Monday, January 22----European Film Promotion, the pan-European organization that represents all the individual film promotion agencies in Europe, is lending financial and marketing for eleven European films that are screening at the Sundance Film Festival. Film Sales (FSS), the European Film Promotion sales initiative, is backing the promotion of 8 European feature films and 3 documentaries screening here this week. Begun in 2004, FSS is funded by the MEDIA Programme ...

Saturday, January 20----CRAZY LOVE, a documentary feature competing in the US Documentary Film Competition ,is one of the first to be close to a distribution deal, according to trade website IndieWire. Magnolia Pictures, a division of 2929 Entertainment, is set to pick up distribution rights to the film, which had its world premiere here on Friday night. The film by Dan Klores, a film publicist-turned-director, documents the long romance between a New York socialite and a shark-like lawyer, ...

Tuesday, January 20----Three filmmakers, whose young careers have been nurtured by Tribeca All Access (TAA), the Tribeca Film Institute program, will have world premieres of their films at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The Tribeca All Access program,now in its fourth year, selects thirty directors and screenwriters from an open call for submissions and provides them with one-on-one meetings with industry insiders. The 2007 Tribeca All Access participants will be announced in early March. A...

Friday, December 29-----In a last farewell nod to the best films of the past year, respected film website IndieWire has announced the results of its first annual Critics Poll. The Romanian drama THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU, an emotionally devastating meditation on the thin line between life and death, was the top choice of a group of 100 leading North American film critics. The film, the second feature of director Cristi Puiu, won the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, wa...

Thursday, December 28-----In a bold new experiment designed to reach younger audiences, New York's famed Metropolitan Opera will offer several of its most celebrated productions to an international network of movie theaters. The first of these will be the December 30th presentation of Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE. The production, directed by stage and film director Julie Taymor, will be beamed live from the stage of The Metropolitan Opera directly into movie theaters around the globe. All of ...

Thursday, December 21----If another indication of the growing influence of non-fiction film was needed, the prestigious Sundance Film Festival has decided to open its ten-day celebration of indie and international cinema with a documentary film. CHICAGO 10, a factual and fanciful look at the infamous trial of organizers of the demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in the summer of 1968, a turning point in America’s evaluation of the Vietnam War, will open the Festiv...

Tuesday, December 12---UNITED 93, the harrowing re-enactment of the last hours on one of the doomed planes hijacked on September 11, 2001, has received the nod as Best Picture of the Year, from the New York Critics Circle, considered the most prestigious and influential of all the national film critics associations. The win by UNITED 93, which was echoed last week by the Washington DC Film Critics Association, catapults the docudrama into prime position for multiple Golden Globe and Oscar nomi...

Sunday big day: we all meet, some 250 festival professionals, long time no see, and how is filmfestivals.telechargerjeux.org doing? How was your festival this year…? GREAT. What are you drinking…? Social friendly with a sense of a community Good crowd, some new festivals that came to learn, others that came to teach and keynote. Great diner with some friends David S. from withoutabox and Brian D. from Smartsound… Kobe Beef Burger, so good, was that for real or was I too tired? Day one Monday 9 in the mor...

Saturday, December 2----Despite the high profile given Dutch documentary films at this year's International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA), and the apparently enthusiastic reaction from Amsterdam audiences, the Friday edition of the IDFA Dagkrant Daily reported that a crisis is looming. Correspondant Jorn Rossing Jensen reported that local documentary filmmaking has entered "a financial limbo", following the former government's budget cuts for the public broadcasters and the transi...

Saturday, December 2----At the "think tank" conference dubbed DocAgora, one of the many parallel events here at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA), the marketing, financing and sales opportunities for documentaries on the web was discussed in a lively debate. One of the most vocal proponents was James Fabricant, the head of marketing and content for MySpace UK. Fabricant was one of several speakers who offered some glimpses into the way that documentary filmmakers can...

Friday, December 1-----The Gotham Awards, held in a former luxury cruise line docking pier on the Hudson River, has become New York's biggest film party. Now in its 16th year, it has established a reputation and a following among the indie film world, particularly filmmakers, executives and talent that call New York home. It has reorganized in the past year (after splitting with the former IFP West, which presents the Independent Spirit Awards in Los Angeles over Oscar weekend), putting great...

Thursday, November 30----While it is true that most major international film festivals do showcase important documentary films, the explosion of documentary-only film festivals, as evidenced here at the International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA) in Amsterdam, is nothing less than an explosion. With brochures littering the industry areas, it is amazing and heartening to see such a massive public interest in the documentary form. So, instead of writing a long article, I am simply going to l...

Sunday, November 26----Geoffrey McNab reported yesterday in the printed IDFA Dagkrant Daily about a new online outlet for documentary films. Lychee-Films.com, founded a few months ago by the Belgian team of Regina De Martelaare and Barend Wayens, is set to provide a "comprehensive international sales channel for non-commercial films, DVDs, CDs and books about film.". The site will also allow film sellers to post information on their film library, along with links and video trailers. The init...

Attendance record at 4th German-French Film Rendez-Vous (9-11 November, 2006) The 4th German-French Film Rendez-Vous came to a successful end on Saturday, November 11: over 370 representatives of the film industries from both countries had come to the Arri Cinema for the gathering from November 9-11. The honorary presidents of this year's event were the directors Jan Schütte and Jean-Jacques Beineix. Apart from discussions on topical issues (like digital cinema projection, VOD, the relations...